Which of the following research designs is weakest in terms of the researcher's ability to establish causality?
A) Experimental
B) Retrospective case-control
C) Prospective cohort
D) Quasi-experimental
B
Feedback:
Retrospective designs (case-control designs) involve collecting data about an outcome in the present and then looking back in time for possible causes. Experiments are considered the gold standard because they come closer than any other design in meeting the criteria for inferring causal relationships. In prospective cohort designs, researchers begin with a possible cause, and then subsequently collect data about outcomes. Prospective studies are more costly, but much stronger, than retrospective studies. For one thing, any ambiguity about the temporal sequence of phenomena is resolved in prospective research (i.e., smoking is known to precede the lung cancer). Quasi-experiments (trials without randomization) involve an intervention but lack a comparison group or randomization. Strong quasi-experimental designs introduce controls to compensate for these missing components, and thus are generally stronger than non-experimental designs (including retrospective designs).
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